CES 2025 has begun, which means a whole fleet of new gadgets has been unleashed onto the world. As usual, team Engadget has battled jet lag, sleep deprivation and the static shocks of those horrible casino carpets to bring you all the news that’s fit to print.
But if you’re too busy to keep your browser locked on the site (or our handy dandy liveblog) then here’s a recap. This may not be everything we covered, but it’s a rundown of the biggest, most important and generally interesting news for your delectation.
There was a strong showing from the biggest names in the PC space, with Intel showing off its latest crop of Arrow Lake chips. These are AI and gaming-friendly slices of silicon that should pop up in PCs and laptops from major manufacturers in the next three months.
Speaking of which, Dell turned up to the show to announce it was killing off the bulk of its brands in favor of copying Apple’s naming strategy. Rather than XPS, Inspiron and Latitude, you’ll have Dell, Dell Pro and Dell Max — which in Sam and Devindra’s minds, is a massive unforced error.
On AMD’s side of the chip war, it announced the new Ryzen Z2, which will power the next crop of gaming handhelds. The rumor mill was suggesting the Z2 would sit at the heart of Valve’s next Steam Deck, which Valve moved quickly to kibosh.
But on the subject of handhelds, Acer wanted to show off its supersized Steam Deck rival, the Nitro Blaze 11. As the name implies, it’s packing an 11-inch display, kickstand and detachable controllers, like a Switch that got out of its cage and found your secret stash of human growth hormone.
Samsung rocked up at the show to flaunt the Galaxy Book5 Pro with Intel’s new Arrow Lake chips. But its real focus was on its new range of home entertainment gear, including its new soundbars and 8K Neo QLED screens, which is also what you’ll find inside its new Frame Pro TVs.
CES isn’t a mobile-friendly show, but Samsung did announce that its first Unpacked keynote of 2025 will drop on January 22. But, psh, whatever: The real Samsung mobile device news we are about is that its ball-shaped robot, Ballie, will go on sale later this year.
On the subject of things scuttling around your floors, plenty of companies are trying to find a way to make their robovacs stand out. Dreame’s X50 can avoid getting stuck on tricky door thresholds since it can vault obstacles as tall as… 6cm, via its “ProLeap System.” Given most robovacs can run aground on a threshold between one room and another, it’s a useful feature.
Roborock’s Saros Z70, meanwhile, has a little robotic arm in its lid that can pick up and move small objects found in its way. As a parent whose kids have some sort of obsession with leaving their socks in obtuse places, I already want one.
Speaking of things I want, despite my longstanding hatred of AI, I’m quite partial to the idea of Halliday’s AI Glasses. They’re designed to help you navigate life, proactively answering your questions, helping you remember key information and generally giving your tired brain a rest.
Yukai Engineering is also looking to tend to your tired brain, with its Mirumi robot designed to make you smile. The theory being if you’re feeling low, it’ll stare at you until you have a brief moment of bemused joy that’ll kick you out of your funk.
It wouldn’t be CES without an appearance by will.i.am, who LG recently appointed as its new Chief Being will.i.am Officer. The company was showing off its new TVs and soundbars, as well as its new will.i.am-infused xboom speakers with built-in boom, boom and pow.
Moving onto the bodily fluids part of our presentation: two different companies turned up to Las Vegas with saliva-testing gadgets asking consumers to spit on that thing to monitor their stress. cortiSense and Hormometer are two products that’ll monitor the cortisol (the “stress hormone”) levels in your saliva.
Day one rounded out with press conferences from a couple of heavy hitters: Sony and NVIDIA. Sony showed off very little in the way of consumer electronics, instead giving us a (eye-wateringly expensive) price for the car it’s making with Honda and then talking about broadcast stuff for an hour. Hey, at least we have a date for The Last of Us season two. As for NVIDIA, CEO Jensen Huang talked about AI for 30 minutes, then announced some (eye-wateringly expensive) new GPUs, then talked for AI for about 30 minutes. Thrilling stuff!
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/everything-you-missed-on-day-one-of-ces-2025-050018086.html?src=rss
